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Ukiah Daily Journal from Ukiah, California • Page 1

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Ukiah, California
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Page:
1
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Ukiah Dailu Journal 118th Year No. 190 Uklah, Mendocino County, California Tuesday, November 28, 1978 16 Cents Hefty hike for consumer prices They've doubled in the past 11 years WASHINGTON (UPI) Led by sharp climbs in food and housing costs, consumer prices surged 0.8 percent in October and have now more than doubled in the past 11 years, the government reported today. The hefty increase last month matched the September advance and offered a vivid demonstration that inflation remains deeply embedded in the nation's economy despite government efforts to bring it under control. The Labor Department said its consumer price index for all urban consumers, which covers about 80 percent of the population, stood at 200.9 last month That statistic means goods and services which cost Americans $100 in 1967 base year for such calculations cost $200.90 in October. Or put another way, $100 today would buy less than half of what it did 11 years ago.

In another bit of discouraging news, the department also reported that individual purchasing power in October slipped below year-ago levels for the fifth consecutive month. The newest inflation report contained these price developments for October: and beverage costs jumped 0.8 percent, the largest gain since June and considerably above the 0.2 percent advance of August and the 0.5 percent increase of September. Grocery prices jumped 0.9 percent after leveling off during the summer, primarily because of large increases in meat costs. costs rose 1 percent, also the largest since June, as home prices and mortgage interest rates continued to climb. care costs rose 1.1 percent, the biggest increase of 1978.

costs doubled from the previous month, rising 0.8 percent. The Labor Department said the overall 0.8 percent increase last month meant prices were 8.9 percent higher than in October 1977. If prices rose over the next year at the same rate they did last month it would mean an annual inflation rate of 9.6 percent. President Carter's anti-inflation program has a goal of bringing inflation down to between 6 and 6.5 percent in 1979, a development which most private economists believe is highJy unlikely. The increase in grocery prices 0.9 percent was more than double September's 0.4 percent gain.

Grocery prices were unchanged in August and had actually declined in July. The main culprit was meat, which rose 2.1 percent after falling in the previous three months. Pork prices rose 3.7 percent, the first gain in five months. Beef prices climbed 1.6 percent following an 0.4 percent gain in the previous month and poultry prices, which declined in both August and September, rose 2.5 percent. Prices also increased for fruits and vegetables, eggs, dairy products and cereal and bakery products.

On the other hand, prices for sugar and sweets fell for the first time this year and the downtrend in coffee prices which began in mid-1977 continued. In the housing category, home prices rose 1.4 percent and mortgage interest rates jumped 0.7 percent, about the same as in September. However, the measurements were compiled before the government's Nov. 1 dollar-rescue plan was announced Since then, mortgage rates have soared dramatically. Home maintenance and repairs were considerably more expensive in October than in recent months while fuels and other utilities rose 0.7 percent.

WILD KINGDOM Journal photographer Dale Kalkman Ukiah over the weekend. The animal gave the photographer a captured the attention of a deer grazing in a field northwest of quick once-over, and trotted off to rejoin a small herd. SF mourns slain mayor, supervisor SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) Security was tightened around City Hall today as San Francisco mourned the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and city Supervisor Harvey Milk, who were shot to death Monday, allegedly by a former city official who thought the mayor had double-crossed him. The suspect, former Supervisor Dan White, 32, was held in isolation at San Francisco's Hall of Justice, charged with two counts of murder. Extra police were assigned to the other nine members of the Board of Supervisors.

San Francisco's legislative body, and Chief Administrative Officer Roger Boas ordered security measures tightened in the ornate domed City Hall, already protected by guards and metal detectors at its main entrances. "There was recently a suggestion to remove that," Boas said. "Now it will have to be strengthened The shootings took place separately at City Hall late Monday morning, just before Moscone was to announce that he had decided against reappointing White to the Board of Supervisors. The youthful-looking White, an ex-policeman and fireman, had resigned just 17 days before, but then asked for his job back San Francisco Chronicle reporter Maitland Zane reported that White apparently was enraged at what he considered a double-cross by Moscone in deciding not to reappoint him. Zane said a furious White told him last Friday, "The gloves are off." Monday night more than 30.000 mourners carrying lighted candles solemnly marched to City Hall to the slow beat of three drums in a gathering organized by leaders of the city's homosexual community.

Milk was an avowed homosexual and leader of San Francisco's large homosexual population. "Weask why, howcan it happen what is in a heart that can turn it to commit this kind of act?" said Dianne Feinstein, president of the Board of Supervisors who automatically became acting mayor upon Moscone's death. "But we know this city is going to continue in the tradition of love and understanding," she said, clasping her hands in front of her in her brief appearance outside the tightly guarded City Hall. Shortly after the shootings, eight wreathes and bunches of flowers were placed on the stairs under the City Hall dome. Attached to one was a note which read, "Prayer will do no good at all because nothing is sacred." from the desk Secret Service investigating Temple 4 hit list' WASHINGTON (UPI) The Secret Service is investigating whether high U.S.

officials it protects were on a reported "hit list" of public figures the Peoples Temple allegedly planned to assassinate, officials said today. The Justice Department also has broadened its probe of the cult's Nov. 18 mass suicide-murder in Guyana to include specific allegations regarding the cult's activities. The department has disclosed previously it is the death of Rep. Leo Ryan, D- killed at a Guyana airport in the shooting that touched off the tragedy.

But it has refused to conduct a broad investigation of the Peoples Temple or any other cult on grounds it might interfere with sect members' constitutional religious freedoms. Justice Department spokesman Terrence Adamson said the department and FBI probes are focusing on "specific facts and specific dividuals." He would not elaborate, saying he could not comment on an ongoing investigation. But it was learned the Secret Service is simultaneously investigating reports the temple had a hit-squad of members who did not commit suicide but were assigned by the Rev Jim Jones, the cult's leader, to carry out the assassinations. San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, who two years ago appointed Jones to serve as head of the city's housing authority, was shot and killed Monday, allegedly by an enraged former city supervisor. There was no indication that killing was linked in any way to the temple.

Jack Warner, spokesman for the Secret Service, told UPI his agency is "interested in any activity that they (the cultists) may or may not have planned that pertained to our protective mission." "There are a number of things reported in the newspapers worthy of review," Warner said. "We're interested in finding out whether there is anything within the designs of the cult that would be of threatening nature to people we protect." The Secret Service's principal responsibility is to protect the president, vice president, their immediate families, and former presidents. The FBI was believed to be conducting check to determine whether there was truth to reports of a list of assassination targets, while preparing to interview dozens of survivors from the Guyana horror about Ryan's death and any other violations of federal crimes. A spokesman for the bureau, asked whether it was investigating charges that cult lawyer Mark Lane knew of the planned mass suicides in advance, said: "We have interviewed Mark Lane as to what he had (known) before, and what he has now." He declined to comment further. Ross Case: The man who brought Jones to Ukiah By MITCHELL LANDSBERG Journal Staff Writer The man who lured Jim Jones and his People's Temple to Ukiah in 1965 says the seeds of the church's destruction were sown before it ever moved to California.

But until last week, he says, no one would listen. Ross Case, now a retired school teacher still living in Ukiah, was an associate minister with the People's Temple when he moved here in 1963. By 1965 he had divorced himself from the church but not before he had convinced Jones and his followers to move from Indiana and settle down in Mendocino County. Looking back last week, he told the Daily Journal, "I believe that the seeds of what Jim became were present when I knew him." But he said when he and other former members tried to tell the community of the horrors of the People's Temple, "People thought we were the nuts." Case was a minister in a small Illinois town in 1959 when he first met Jim Jones. Jones had opened the People's Temple in Indianapolis, and Case was impressed with the waj the church brought whites and blacks together in an area not known for its racial tolerance.

In 1961, he joined the People's Temple as an associate minister. It was shortly after Case's arrival that Jones reported having a vision of nuclear holocaust. Case believed him, and urged that the group find a place that would be safe from such a disaster. At first, Case recalled, Jones scoffed at the idea. But he later became intrigued and began looking into places to relocate the sect.

A magazine article in late 1961 convinced Jones that the People's Temple should move to either Eureka, California, or Bela Horizante, Brazil. He favored the latter. So it was that he left shortly thereafter to visit what was then British Guiana to become Guyana and Brazil. Case, meanwhile, decided to go to California. Further research had convinced him that Ukiah was also in a Northern California safe zone unlikely to be disturbed by nuclear attack When he found that Ukiah was easier to reach than Eureka, he decided to come here Upon arriving Case contacted Jack Simpson, then superintendant of the Ukiah Elementary School District.

He was given a job as a teacher at Yokayo School. Jones was to tire of his life in Brazil, and Case convinced him in 1965 to come to Ukiah. But before Jones and his followers arrived, Case heard things he didn't like. For instance, a fellow temple member, Harold Cordell, wrote Case a letter which convinced Case that Jones and the church were turning from the Bible. And another associate minister, Archie Imes, told Case he had submitted himself totally to Jim Jones and no longer considered himself a Christian Case quit the church "When I found out that he (Jones) was really leading people away from Jesus I separated myself from the group," he recalled Case said that what he knew of Jones before he left, and what he heard from temple members later, indicated something was going wrong inside the People's Temple "I found in '65 and even before that Jim was capable of lying to meet his ends." he said He wanted power He seemed to feed upon praise and adoration Case said Jones used words he never ht-ard other ministers use, like "screw," and seemed to have a fixation on sex.

"He required every woman who worked closely with him to have sex with him," he said. Jones, said Case, "had a deep unresolved sex conflict." The minister once confided in a temple member that he felt "dirty" whenever he had sex with his wife, according to Case. And Case said that although Jones punished temple members for using alcohol or drugs, he himself used both. Jones was "a Percodan addict," who took amphetamines to reduce the side effects of the pain killer, Case said. According to Case, Jones had been heading toward disaster for a long time "I would say that the seeds were all there and that he just got worse and Case said Jones threatened to sue him after he left the church "Later, the threats escalated to do me in." The threats, he said, haven't bothered him.

"I've come to the point in my life where I feel I'm ready to die at any instant," Case said "I will not fear any attempt on my life I am ready to die But as for the mass suicides in Guyana "I think it was practically murder By Jim Garner Two absurdities stick out in the senseless slayings of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. First, an elaborate security system was installed at the San Francisco City Hall which called for all persons entering to pass through a metal detector. However, guards say there was an unguarded basement entrance where the suspected killer, former Supervisor Dan White, may have entered. Guards also report that many familiar faces were allowed to bypass the metal detectors. The security system proved about as effective as the hordes of Secret Service in Dallas on that November day 15 years ago.

The second absurdity has to do with the salaries of supervisors in San Francisco. White, who had resigned because of financial problems, was making $9,600 a year in a job that requires full time participation. His statement of resignation indicated he could not support his family on that salary. White had been a fireman before being elected supervisor. And what was his salary then? Nearly double that of a supervisor $18,500.

Not that this in any way justifies what White allegedly did. But the apparent stress and strain of financial woes did cause the young man to commit terrible, unbelievable deeds. FB landmark gutted by fire FORT BRAGG The Presbyterian Church on the corner of Pine and Main streets in Fort Bragg was destroyed by fire early this morning. The Fort Bragg Fire Department said the building was "a total loss." A fire department spokesman said the cause of the blaze was unknown. An investigation is under way.

The church, built around the turn of the century, had undergone several remodelings. Asst. Fire Chief Louis Ghiossi today said it was "a very solid and a good building." He called it one of Fort Bragg's most attractive structures. Ghiossi said the alarm was sounded at 6:05 this morning. "It was completely engulfed in fire by the time we got there," he said.

Health Planning Council to meet The Mendocino County Health Planning Council will meet tonight at 6:30 p.m. in Fort Bragg to discuss the results of the hospital questionnaire and all recent events concerning the hospital situation. The council will also review the issues involving Sherwood Oaks on the coat and Driftwood, Ukiah Convalescent and Damiano Health Center, Ukiah and develop a plan of action The meeting will be held at May Belle Rohrer's house, 19251 Noyo Acres Drive, Fort Bragg. Weather 1978 Date Hi Lo 27 59 32 11 a.m. Today 50 Rainfall 3 61 1977 Date Hi Lo 27 66 44 Low Today 38 Last Year 9.07 Northwestern California: Cloudy north with chance of rain through tonight then partly cloudy Wednesday Mostly fair south with local dense fog or low clouds night and mornings Little temperature change Variable winds to 15 mph Fort Bragg 38 and 55 Ukiah 32 and 58 Forecast Thursday through Saturday Unsettled weather with rain becoming likely about Friday and Saturday Tern peratures averaging near seasonal nor mats Highs in the mid 50s to in id 60s Lows in the mid 30s to mid 40s at low elevations.

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About Ukiah Daily Journal Archive

Pages Available:
310,258
Years Available:
1890-2009